Cut Up or Shut Up!

516 ARTS (re)presents Cut Up or Shut Up!, a selection of collage animations curated by Bryan Konefsky that was originally presented for the exhibition Alchemy in 2008. This international collection of collage films spans 70 years, and includes several of the “first wave” of collage animators who did this experimental work before the Internet. The program focuses on the cut and paste aesthetic.

The title Cut Up or Shut Up! is based on a 1972 text of the same name by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin, in which the authors explored a cut-up technique of writing that they first popularized in the 1960s.

Konsefsky says, “Collage films represent a profound sense of the cinematic in that they foreground ways in which disparate sounds/images are sutured together to create moving image stories.”